


Red, Gold, and Green

by Yahtzee



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Christmas Fluff, Flirting, M/M, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 14:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5294666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik's working late at the coffeehouse on December 24. Why not? It's not even his holiday, he figures. The evening passes uneventfully--until a beautiful, blue-eyed stranger rolls in. As Erik writes the name "Charles" on the paper cup, he wonders why this guy doesn't seem to have anywhere to go on Christmas Eve...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red, Gold, and Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mssdare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mssdare/gifts).



> A Mutant Madness Happy for MssDare!
> 
> *****

 

People who had never worked retail often thought that Christmas Eve would be quiet at a coffeehouse. Most of the day, that was a dirty lie. Erik heard from the weary morning barista that people had been lined up outside for their 6:30 opening—first store clerks fortifying themselves for the rush, and then the desperate shoppers who, somehow, still had gifts left to buy.

However, as the hours drew on, the quiet began. More stores closed; fewer customers stopped by. People were going to parties, heading over to relatives' home, or helping children put out cookies and milk. Nobody needed lattes any more. Really, Erik should have closed his shop no later than three or four p.m.

But some store employees would have to work late regardless of the holiday. Erik figured some of them might want coffee. He wasn't celebrating, so why not keep the shop open? The rest of his baristas were long gone, and he was now behind the counter, enduring Christmas music on the speakers ("Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella"), scrolling through a book on his iPad, and wondering how long it would take him to de-holiday the store. He let his employees choose the decorations and go wild with it; since a few of them were Parsons students, they had taken it as a design challenge. Red, gold and green ornaments of foil and folded paper dangled from dozens of wires, and people had been encouraged to donate to Unicef by putting their names on snowflakes dusted with silver glitter.

 _I'll still be sweeping glitter out of corners in July_ , Erik thought ruefully.

Outside the snowflake-decorated windows, the city was all but dark; only the occasional taxi headlights broke the gloom. Erik found himself—not blue, really, but pensive. Chanukah had ended a few days prior, and though his parents had both passed away several years ago, he had not yet accustomed himself to those eight empty nights. Christmas, which meant little to him on its own, felt like an echo—a reminder of what had been lost, reflected back to him in the empty space.

The jingle bells on the door sounded, and Erik looked over to see it opening automatically for a guy in a wheelchair.

A hot guy in a wheelchair, as it turned out.

Blue eyes. Floppy brown hair. Lips so red that Erik would've assumed he wore lipstick, were it not for the fact that the rest of his clothing was not only masculine but almost stuffy: tweed trousers, thick cardigan, mittens. Best of all was his smile, which lit up as he rolled toward the counter. "Thank goodness," said the newcomer in an English accent. "I'd very nearly given up hope."

"Hope is our business," Erik replied, which made his customer smile. "What will you have?"

"A peppermint mocha, large."

"Coming right up. And what name?" Ridiculous to ask, when this guy was the only customer in the shop, but counter-service habits died hard.

"Charles."

"All right, Charles. Take a table—I'll bring it out to you."

"Oh, I can manage, really."

"No doubt." Erik had not wanted to make it sound as though he didn't think Charles could fully manage in his chair. He gestured at the empty tables surrounding them. "But I don't have anything else to do."

"Very well then. Table service is rather the luxury." Charles' blue eyes sparkled with humor, or perhaps something else, something very like the energy percolating within Erik at the moment. "I ought to have come to this coffeehouse earlier."

"Yeah, you should've." With that, Erik busied himself making the mocha, warmed by the sound of Charles' laughter.

Good humor and quick wit glowed within Charles as surely as light from a candle. Yet Erik couldn't help thinking, _He's all alone on Christmas Eve._

Charles bore no gift-wrapped packages. He seemed to be in no particular hurry. And he hadn't mentioned any plans—something customers usually did right before a holiday. Sometimes they were venting steam ( _Ugh, I'm going to wind up sitting next to my libertarian uncle again_ ), sometimes bubbling with anticipation ( _we're flying out to Minnesota tonight_ ), but always, always looking toward the celebration ahead.

Maybe Charles didn't have much to look forward to.

As Erik pumped the peppermint syrup into the cup, he stole a glance at Charles, who was staring into the distance wistfully. Maybe even sadly. Could he really have nowhere to go for the holiday?

Maybe his family lived elsewhere, but Charles found the trip too much of a strain; Erik had heard horror stories of the shabby treatment airlines dealt out to flyers who required wheelchairs. Or maybe he had lost the people nearest to him in whatever horrible accident had put him in the chair to begin with—a melodramatic thought, Erik realized, and yet entirely possible.

The answer might be simpler and, in its way, sadder than either of his first two thoughts. Maybe Charles was just…alone.

As Erik blended the coffee and cocoa, he peeked at the clock on the wall. Ten minutes until the hour he'd chose to close the shop. But if nobody else was coming in and he had nowhere else to rush off too, he might as well stay for a while. Hang out. Be friendly.

After squirting an extra dollop of whipped cream atop the mocha, Erik walked to Charles' table with the drink in one hand, a piece of coffee cake in the other. "Here you go," Erik said, "plus a treat on the house."

"Oh, I—" Charles stopped and laughed. "I was going to refuse the coffee cake, but actually I love it."

"Me too."

Charles' blue eyes met Erik's. "Want to share, then?"

That hadn't been part of Erik's "be friendly" plan, but he also had a weakness for coffee cake. "Don't mind if I do."

 

**

 

The next couple of hours passed in a sweetly caffeinated blur. Aside from a brief interlude where a harried woman dashed in to buy a gift card for her doorman, Erik and Charles spent the entire time talking, laughing, even arguing, but drawing closer to each other every few minutes.

"Trump hasn't a chance," Charles insisted. "Not one poll has him coming anywhere close to defeating any potential nominee."

"Nobody would've thought he could get the Republican nomination a year ago, and here we are. Who's to say what's next?" Erik hesitated, unsure whether to continue; the next was something he hadn't said aloud to anyone yet, though the thought had been taking shape in his brain for a few weeks. "I've been looking at online tutorials about making fake IDs. In case—in case people needed identification that didn't mark them as Muslim, or Mexican, or whoever that fascist blowhard attacks next."

"I hope it doesn't come to that." But Charles' voice had turned thoughtful. "I suppose you'd need a laminating machine, wouldn't you?"

They figured out how to create a setup that could produce convincing fake IDs and wondered how to turn it into an underground network. They debated the merits of Sanders versus Clinton. They starting laughing about the Egyptian pyramids as grain silos, then got to talking about the ancient pharaohs—a subject on which Charles was surprisingly well-informed—and before Erik knew it, they were three hours past closing, waxing rhapsodic about the chance that Nefertiti's tomb might soon be found.

"Wouldn't that be amazing?" Charles sighed. "To see the world's most beautiful woman, her mummy, her portraits, everything. Though admittedly women aren't my usual preference."

That was just about the clumsiest announcement of homosexuality Erik had ever heard, but he was more hopeful than amused. "Same here. Nefertiti, though—if that one bust we have of her is any indication—"

" _Wow_."

"That's the word. Wow." Erik laughed. Really, _wow_ was more how he felt every time his eyes met Charles'… which had been happening more and more often the past few hours…

Charles tapped his phone, long dark and unused, only long enough to bring up the time. "So, when does the tyrant who owns this place let you go home on Christmas Eve?"

Erik's grin widened. "I'm the tyrant. Thought I'd let my gentile employees have the day off."

"You volunteered to stay so late?" Charles said. "I take back the 'tyrant' bit. But don't you usually close even earlier than this?" He pointed toward the posted hours on the door.

This part was either going to be awkward or wonderful. Erik had no idea how to handle this, except that he was sure he shouldn't prevaricate. "I'd meant to close up a couple of hours ago. But—you were alone on Christmas, and I didn't want to throw you out—and then I wound up enjoying talking to you."

"…you were staying here to keep me company?" Charles' eyes widened. Oh, no. Had Erik messed up? He hadn't wanted to come cross as pitying—

\--but then Charles started to laugh. "What?" Erik said.

"I stayed because I wanted to keep you company. Alone on Christmas—the same thing. The exact same thing. Aren't we lovely?"

Erik would not admit to being lovely, but he didn't try to hide the pleased flush warming his cheeks. "So you have plans after all?"

"My sister and her fiancé are having a get-together at their place in Chelsea. Technically the soiree started half an hour ago. Eggnog, cake, roast beef—that kind of thing. Plus, as midnight comes on, we usually watch 'Die Hard' and 'Tokyo Godfathers.'"

"What's 'Tokyo Godfathers'?"

"The best Christmas anime ever. Gritty and sad and yet so incredibly endearing." Charles leaned closer. "If you'd like to see it—we have room."

Although Erik went to the same glut of holiday parties as everyone else, he usually found it more a chore than a delight. Tonight, though, might be an exception. "On one condition."

"What's that?"

"Would this be a date?"

Charles' blue eyes shifted from doubt about the correct answer to the simple happiness that shone from people when they told the truth. "Yes."

Erik smiled back. "Then just give me ten minutes to close."

He went through all the steps, but faster than usual. So only seven minutes passed before Erik and Charles went out the door one after the other, warm despite the new snowfall outside, to the jingle of bells.


End file.
